There is something beautiful about standing beside someone who notices what you missed.

We have all experienced it.

A friend points toward a bird we had walked right past.

A child stops to watch an insect we never would have seen.

Someone notices kindness hidden beneath another person’s awkwardness.

Suddenly the world becomes larger.

Not because anything changed.

Because someone else’s eyes helped us see what ours had overlooked.

Perhaps this is one of God’s gifts.

None of us was meant to see alone.

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There is a sentence by Paul that I have read countless times.

“Now we see through a glass, dimly…”

For years, I heard it as though he had written,

“Now I see…”

I made it about my own understanding.

My own limitations.

My own journey.

But Paul doesn’t say I.

He says we.

That one small word has been changing the way I read Scripture.

Perhaps Paul is not simply saying that each of us sees imperfectly.

He is reminding the Church that none of us sees completely on our own.

Not one of us sees completely.

Not alone.

And perhaps that is why, when Paul later prays in Ephesians, he doesn’t ask that one believer would comprehend the love of Christ, but that we might comprehend it together with all the saints.

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I began noticing something else.

Paul seems to do this again and again.

“We have the mind of Christ.”

“We who are many are one body.”

“Bear one another’s burdens.”

Even his great prayer in Ephesians is filled with the language of togetherness.

He prays that we may be strengthened.

That Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith.

And then he says something that takes my breath away.

That we may have strength together with all the saints to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth…

and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

Together.

With all the saints.

No single life can exhaust the love of Christ.

Not because God’s love is too small for one person.

Because it is too vast.

It is meant to be discovered together.

We need one another’s eyes.

He has always been forming one Body through many members.

Together, we begin to bear witness to the fullness of Christ in ways no one of us ever could alone.

Perhaps that is one of the Spirit’s gentle works.

He distributes not only gifts throughout the Body, but different ways of seeing, so that together we may behold more of Christ than any one of us ever could alone.

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We often speak about the Body of Christ as though our differences matter because we have different gifts.

Some teach.

Some encourage.

Some serve.

Some lead.

All of that is true.

But I wonder if something even deeper is happening.

Perhaps we also need one another because we notice different things.

One person sees beauty.

Another notices suffering.

One sees courage.

Another sees faithfulness.

One hears hope in a passage of Scripture.

Another hears mercy.

None of us sees everything.

Together…

we begin to see more.

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This has begun to change the way I listen to others.

I no longer ask first,

“Do I agree?”

I find myself asking,

“What are they seeing that I have not yet seen?”

Not every glimpse tells the whole story.

But every honest act of seeing is an invitation to look again.

Humility may be less about doubting what I have seen…

and more about believing there is still more to see.

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This may be why I have come to treasure conversations that leave me seeing differently.

Not because someone persuaded me.

But because someone noticed something I had walked past.

Like cedar waxwings gently passing a berry back and forth…

perhaps this is how seeing itself grows.

None of us possesses the whole gift.

It becomes richer as it passes from one life to another.

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One day, Paul says, we shall see face to face.

Until then…

He has graciously given us one another’s eyes until the day we see Him—

face to face.

Not so we all see the same things.

But so that together…

we may begin to see the Father’s heart more clearly than any of us ever could alone.

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Thank you for seeing with me.

Has someone ever helped you see something you would never have discovered on your own?

I’d love to hear what you’ve discovered.

— Gilda

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©️ Gilda Wray. All rights reserved.

Wray of Light

Seeing Together